Counting the impact on just a dozen local suppliers, a Fuyao Glass America vice president identified a $93 million impact the Moraine plant is having on area businesses Thursday.
That was one estimate in a panel discussion at the Fuyao plant by Dave Burrows, a vice president of operations at the former General Motors facility.
“And we have hundreds of suppliers” beyond those dozen, Burrows added.
That number doesn’t take into account the plant’s $5 million monthly payroll for more than 1,700 workers — a workforce heading toward an expected 2,000 workers by year’s end — and the overall estimated total economic impact of some $280 million a year.
In all, global auto glass producer Fuyao is approaching a $750 million investment in two U.S. plants, in Moraine and in a raw glass supply plant in Illinois, said John Gauthier, Fuyao Glass America president.
“This investment is changing lives,” Gauthier said. “It’s having a huge impact on people, on families.”
He said he expects the plant off West Stroop Road and Kettering Boulevard to be the “largest, most advanced and efficient” auto glass production plant in the world “for many decades to come.”
The comments and estimates came in a panel discussion hosted by U.S. Reps. Mike Turner, R-Dayton, and Steve Chabot, R-Cincinnati.
Including representatives of two key local Fuyao suppliers, Woolpert and Wagner Industrial, panel participants agreed that the Fuyao story is a remarkable one.
“This is a plant that could have been demolished as GM was exiting the community,” Turner said.
GM closed its SUV assembly operation at the sprawling facility in December 2008. An industrial developer purchased the plant and leased parts of it to smaller companies before Fuyao Global Chairman Cho Tak Wong bought 1.4 million square feet at the site in 2014.
Since then, the plant has expanded into 1.8 million square feet and last month announced a 15-year lease of an additional 256,000 square feet.
Gauthier said the new lease freed the company from an immediate need for a new warehouse at the site. Fuyao owns 116 acres at the complex.
“We are out of space,” Burrows said. “We have really packed this place in.”
While company leaders said there is no immediate need for a new warehouse, Fuyao may need to revisit the issue in the future.
